This blog began through a NIFA grant for Missouri Beginning Farmers. It continues today as a way for beginning farmers to learn about new ideas and to hear about upcoming events of interest. It is maintained by Debi Kelly (kellyd@missouri.edu).

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As an Extension Associate with the University of Missouri, I work with beginning farmers, small farms, alternative agriculture and organic farming. I am also the Co-coordinator for the Missouri Sustainable Agriculture and Research (SARE) Education Professional Development Program (PDP).

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Monday, June 9, 2014

Census Drilldown” Beginning Farmers and Ranchers – Part 1

On
May 2, USDA released data from the 2012 Census of Agriculture. The Census of Agriculture has been conducted
since 1840 and currently is collected once every five years. This 2 day series will look at particular
themes from the Census that relate to beginning farmers and ranchers.

The
new Census data continues to show the aging of the American farm population,
with the average age of the American farmer increasing from 57.1 in 2007 to
58.3 in 2012. What’s more concerning
however, is the slow rate at which new farmers are entering agriculture, and
the much faster rate at which older farmers are retiring from farming. On the whole, the U.S. farm population shrunk
by roughly 4 percent in the last five years.
This is not all that surprising, given the economic recession and severe
weather conditions from the past several years.

However,
there were 20 percent fewer beginning farmers (those farmers who have been
farming for ten years or less) in 2012 than there were five years earlier. Our take away? For starters, that statistic alone signals
that recent efforts to reverse the trend of the aging of our farm population
have not been as impactful as initially hoped.

The
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has long championed the need
for a scaled up investment in the next generation of farmers, and we have had
many successes. The new Census results,
however, could not be a clearer signal that our country urgently needs a far
more robust national strategy to restore farming as a viable career for the
next generation of producers who will step in and continue to farm our
country’s land and feed people well into the future.

Below,
we break down these Census results further in order to better understand which
regions of the country are losing ground fastest with respect to growing the
next generation of farmers and which states are leading the way as potential
models for how to successfully transition farmland down to a new cohort of
young and aspiring farmers.

General Trends

While
the farming population in general shrunk by about 4 percent over the past five
years, the most significant decrease occurred in farmers who have been farming
five years or less. This pool of very
new, beginning farmers shrunk by 23.3 percent since the last Census was
released in 2007, whereas those farmers who got started farming ten years ago
(between 2003 and 2007) fared slightly better and only decreased by 19.6
percent. However, even the more
“established” beginning farmers shrunk at a much faster rate than their more
established farmers who have been farming for more than ten years.

And
while there may have been many more farmers who started farming since the last
Census, this trend tells us that either not as many farmers chose to pursue
agriculture as a career since the last Census, or those who did start farming
in the past ten years, and especially over the past five years, did not make it
and quit farming temporarily or altogether.

The
2012 Census also had a slightly lower response rate than previous years, and it
wouldn’t be surprising if beginning farmers had a lower response rate compared
with more established farms that are accustomed to filling out the Census every
five years. In some ways, it is much
harder for USDA to track down beginning farmers compared with more established
farmers.

Still,
there is real concern about the meager numbers of new farmers who are
transitioning into agriculture, given that large numbers of their predecessors
will be retiring in droves in the coming decades. The new Census results show that there are
now more farmers over the age of 75 than those between the ages of 35 and 44. From the chart below, it is obvious to see
the “lost generation” of farmers under the age of 45 who have chosen to pursue
a career other than agriculture.

Despite
this gloomy news, the latest Census does show a small increase in the very
youngest farmers between the ages of 25 and 34.
While this modest increase is not substantial enough to offset the large
droves of farmers reaching retirement age, it is a notable trend that suggests
that more and more young people are finding their way into agriculture as a
first career option. Groups like the National Young Farmers Coalition have
recognized this trend in recent years and have helped develop federal programs,
resources and network opportunities for these very young farmers who are coming
into agriculture without farm backgrounds and without much capital, but a lot
of passion for growing food and taking care of the land.

However,
the huge gap between the number of “young” farmers under the age of 44 and
those older farmers which make up the vast majority of our country’s farming
population suggests more needs to be done to not only recruit more young people
into farming, but also those farmers who may be considering agriculture as a
second career in their mid-30s to late 40s.

States with the
Oldest (and Youngest) Farmers

In
general, the new Census data shows that the Plains, Upper Midwest, and a few
Northeastern states tend to have younger farmers than the South, Southwest, and
Western regions of the country.Nebraska
leads the country as the state with the youngest farmers (55.7 years) and
Arizona farmers are the oldest on average (61 years).

Average Age US
Farmers

However,
there are very localized pockets of both old and young farmers.Two counties in Colorado (Broomfield and
Denver) and two counties in West Virginia (Mingo and McDowell) have some of the
oldest farmers in the country with the average farmer being as old as 73.6
years old.On the opposite spectrum, the
counties surrounding New York City (NY), Boston (MA), and Ithaca (NY) have some
of the youngest farmers across the nation, including an average age as low as
37.4 years.This trend points to the
growing number of younger farmers settling in urban and peri-urban areas where
they are able to take advantage of direct access local markets – including
farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture, and direct to retail sales.